Paul's Visit

A friend from Australia has been visiting, and I've had great fun hearing about his adventures in Cambodia and showing him around this part of Japan. We also had a fantastic roll-your-own sushi dinner together with a Japanese friend of his he met in Brisbane too. We went to a few places like the Hiroshige Art Museum (online gallery), and Kunozan Toshogu. I also got to go back to the Toro ruins and this time the shop was open so I could get one of those cool alien-looking clay figurines. I only realised just now that I was wearing a shirt of a person doing the same thing!

We had a day driving around Mount Fuji with Paul's friend too, and although the summer skies are pretty hazy and clouds obscured it during the day, we did get a good view as the sun set. We also went to one of the caves in the dense forest around Mount Fuji. Actually there are many caves in the area and the whole forest area is pretty treacherous because the lava crust has collapsed unevenly. It's said that compasses don't work in the area because of local magnetism, and that campers have been lost for days and even died there. It's also common for suicidal people to wander off into the forest to die or hang themselves, and hikers find many dead bodies each year. At first I thought it was being greatly exaggerated, but it really is a big problem. The forest itself is spectacular to be in though (just don't stray from the path!)

On a lighter note, here's a helpful sign for travellers. It's even more bizarre because the Japanese actually says something completely different about putting your rubbish in the bin instead of throwing it out the window. I wonder if Australian tourist signs have similar mis-translations (though strange English seems to be a bit of a fad here, and is often done on purpose). Oh, and this truck had such a bad exhaust problem I had to take a picture. The poor car stuck behind it couldn't pass it either because the smoke was too thick to see oncoming traffic.